Mamas, Don't Let Your Daughters Grow Up to be Comics

It's a well-travelled path: a flat-out comedian wants to be taken More
Seriously As An Actor, and so gets into a movie that allows him to show
that he's more than Ace Ventura/Carl Spackler/Happy Gilmore/Austin
Powers/Mork/Navin Johnson.

Something that bothered me (even as a basic Neanderthal when it comes to
feminism) was how easy it was to make that list, and the total absence
of women on it.

Hypothesis: one's career path as an actor is severely limited if you
(a) are a woman, and (b) start out doing comedy.

Evidence: let's look at Saturday Night Live cast members.
Let's look at only the ones currently alive, because who knows what
might have happened to Gilda Radner or John Belushi?

You see what I mean, I hope, even those of you saying: "Who's Christine
Ebersole?"

More: look at the Oscar nominees for Best Actor/Actress for the past few
years. On the guy
side, we see Tom Hanks,
Jamie Foxx, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Will Smith, … all with early solid
roots in comedy. Even one
of Leonardo DiCaprio's early roles was on the Growing Pains
sitcom.

On the gal side side, we have … Helen Hunt.
And maybe you could make an
argument for Diane Keaton and (going back a ways)
Mary Tyler Moore.
But otherwise, the women nominees
did not start their careers cracking jokes.

Also check today's USA Today article
provocatively headlined: Few
bright spots for funny ladies. It points out that there are darn few
leading TV sitcom roles for funny women these days, let alone
career paths to increased acting respectability. (There's also a
fetching picture
of the aforementioned Ms. Louis-Dreyfus.)

The conclusion is inescapable: women who want to have
wildly successful acting careers should probably avoid starting out in
comedy.

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